SOURCE: "A Son's Notes," in New York Times Book Review, Vol. 99, November 13, 1994, p. 11.

In the following review, Watkins provides a laudatory assessment of Fatheralong.

John Edgar Wideman's latest book, Fatheralong, is a hybrid. It is at once a memoir and a meditation on fatherhood, race, metaphysics, time and the afterlife. Mr. Wideman has laid claim to a vast landscape, which he traverses boldly, although occasionally with uneven steps.

As a memoir it is superb. The author brings all of his considerable skills (demonstrated in the novels of his Homewood trilogy and in his short fiction) into play in a quest to understand the simultaneous estrangement and physical connection he felt toward his father.

The book's title is derived from the gospel song "Father Along," a song that for Mr. Wideman suggests the value of "resignation, learning to wait and trust and endure." These are the qualities, he writes...